Joe Seamons is a musician and educator based in the Pacific Northwest and dedicated to helping people connect with their heritage through music and storytelling. As co-founder of The Rhapsody Project, he builds communities that serve and center young people while establishing cultural equity.

 

Alongside non-profit partners Totem Star and Red Eagle Soaring, Joe helped established The Station Space, a new youth arts hub. As part of the leadership team of Black & Tan Hall, Joe has worked since 2016 to establish the Black-led, multi-cultural cooperative that now stewards a 3,000 square foot performance venue in South Seattle..

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Born and raised in Columbia County, Oregon, Joe interprets the songs and stories of sawmills, logging camps, and commercial fisheries composed by workers and folklorists of that community. Many of these songs are included on the 2016 album, Timberbound, the story of which is detailed here. In the same vein, Joe served as an executive producer for a Smithsonian Folkways album entitled, "Roll, Columbia: Woody Guthrie's 26 Northwest Songs."

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Joe's work to interpret, document, and reflect upon the ethos of Northwest folk songs and stories--post-colonization--continues regularly on his blog, which you can read here. 

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Through his mother's side of the family, Joe is a descendant of the Aurora Colony, making him a fifth-generation Oregonian. His surname is the legacy of a family of English farmers who lived since at least the 1490's the small community of Weedon, an old English name meaning, "pagan shrine on a hill." Through his music, teaching, and writing, Joe is on a mission to grapple with and address the legacy of colonization that lead to his existence. 

 

In his multi-instrumental duo with fellow songster, Ben Hunter, Joe has toured internationally and been recognized by the Ethnic Heritage Council for excellence in ethnic performance and significant contributions to the development and presentation of the traditional cultural arts in the Pacific Northwest.